Joe Rogan - Steven Tyler on Finding Aerosmith's Sound

Because I can't even, I don't even feel alive unless I'm out of breath. That's what I get for being a musician. I lose a pound tonight on stage sweating with Aerosmith, right? I'm up there with standing next to fucking Joe Perry, really? The last of the real rock stars. You stood across from him. He's a bad motherfucker. I don't know if he was stoned or not with you, but he's... When I get text messages from him, I'm like, holy shit. And I fucking... Send me a text message. And I saw him in the beginning and I knew he was that. He's something special. I knew he was that. He's got a recognizable... There's certain people that have a sound. Joe has... He absolutely has a sound. You know what has a sound? Gary Clark Jr. Like you hear Gary Clark Jr. play guitar, you go, okay. That's a Gary Clark Jr. riff. There's certain people that have a sound. Joe most certainly has a sound. It's like he's expressing himself through that guitar in a very recognizable way. You know? You two together, man. What a fucking combination that was with his guitar and your voice and... But here's the trip. In the beginning, the first album, people have said, who's singing on the second album? Because on the second album, I kind of sing like that. And I kind of like that Pee Wee Herman. Chocolatey. I kind of fucking... What are you doing? I kind of put that... Because I want to sound black. What the fuck? I'm not stupid. I get it. I wanted to put some fucking soul in my voice. I knew I had it. So you tried to force it out. No, no. What I learned was, you know, like from Nat King Cole. It's the kind of music I listen to when I was a kid. When I met Natalie, I walked up behind her and I went, Kimo, Kimo, stare, stare, mai, mohoe, my rumstick, a pump and nickel soup, bang, nip, cat, bottom, itch, cameo, I love. She went, no one has sung that ever to me except my daddy. It was... His dad passed, obviously, way before. But those are the records I listened to. That was Nat singing his best shit. And so I wanted to sound... Well, here's what I wanted to sound. I wanted to sound more like Joe Perry was playing. And singing really sweet and nice. Isn't it dream on? Sweet and nice. I kind of went there when we wrote a song on a water bed. Joe Perry and I were sitting around smoking a big fatty. And Mark Lehman was there. He was our road manager. And we... And Joe goes... I'm looking at him. And that was a sentence. He spoke to me. And I said, we all live on the edge of town, where we all live in a solo round. People start coming over, do just a gritting simple, gotta move out, go sit in, moving in. See what I'm saying? He spoke to me. I answered. Translated it. Yeah. I would listen to the bit. We would sit around and we would jam. That's what we did the best. And we would create this music. And I would put the headphones on later because I'm the lyricist and I wrote the melody. I see when I heard Joe's band, I thought, I'm going to take my dad, Vic Tolarico, who went to Juilliard in New York. And I grew up in the Bronx, 5610 Netherland Avenue, 6G Department. And I grew up under the piano and I listened to my dad practice every day on a Steinway. So who lived between the notes? Joe. You know what I'm saying? I love you names, Joe. I just love Joe's. Fucking love Joe Perry. Fucking love. He's my bro. He goes, hey Joe, what the fuck, man? It's always been that. But anyway, so I took my melody. You know what I hear when I listen to him playing? Whoa, shit. So when you guys did your second album and you did that sort of affectation, is that how you would call it, of your voice? After you heard it and you listened to people talking about it, did you decide to change it for the next album? Wow, that's cool. I did just go away for a minute, didn't I? Yeah. I love it when I do that. Yeah. The melody that I learned from my dad and then listening to the music we listened to, you know, Dorsey and Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole and then Janice Joplin and Village Fugs. Who were the first ones to put on the back of their album, Lunatic Vagina? That's who sang the song. It's 61. The Mothers of Invention. These fucking bands. And I went, what? So I thought singing really like my dad taught me in the notes and right on. You know, C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C. You know, whatever the fuck. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. You gotta, not only that, but if you don't put inflections into it, there ain't no feeling and there ain't no meaning. I got to love you like I do last time, baby. Whoops. Right. You know, where you say it. But you have to feel it. It can't be something you're trying to feel. It's got to be something you actually feel. Does that make sense? Yeah, but I think, you know, Joe hats off to him, man. The way he played his guitar in practice at night, he'd fucking nod out. He'd be sitting in his chair and the fucking couch caught on fire. I walked in with a pot of water. He's laying there, rub his little smoke. I went, Joe, what the fuck, man? Yeah, he's playing this riff and we turned it into a song. This kind of stuff happened so much. And he did it away too. I mean, fucking A, obviously, you know, Tom Hamilton. Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo. Sweet emotion. That's how a band comes together, you know? And I can't tell you any other way than that magic. And every inch of the way, the reason it doesn't feel like I'm 70 and I don't feel the time and it feels like yesterday, we just started, is because every time I'm on stage, I'm singing those same fucking songs again, same way, same feeling, same looking, same people, different people, different people. But I'm singing those same songs. Do you know the guy that's looking... Anyway, so to answer your question, second album sounds a little bit more raunchy, more in tune with Joe's guitar. And I think we found our second album. Third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth, we got it. Right. But it took that. We had songs on it like Walking the Dog, because we ran out of songs. That was something we played in clubs. I remember we had a contract. What are we going to do? So we wrote Moving Out. Then the guys would get stoned and drink Boone's Farm and I go, come on, you guys. We fucking wrote this song. Fuck you. And flick their joint at me. So I remember getting pissed off, Walking Out. They hate me when I tell this story, but I remember being really fucking angry, walking out to the piano and writing. One Way Street. I don't play guitar. And I wrote, make it, don't break it, first song on the first album. Some great shit, because I feel like, you know, in anger, you know, I didn't know what to do, but I just, but I used that. So I wrote a bunch of songs and I think it let everybody's fuse. I think that. Joe certainly lit mine. Tom Hamilton in his outtakes, as he called him. Sweet emotion. That's Tom Hamilton.